Link Dump 2016-01-01

2016-01-01

I was interviewed for an article in Oxy's student newspaper.
I am currently reading Christopher J. Phillips' fantastic The New Math: A Political History, which talks about the failure of 1960s' math education reform to focus on structure and mathematical thinking instead of memorization. Here's an article in the NYTimes, and here's an excerpt: "[G. Baley] Price neatly divided the mathematical world into two camps: one that envisioned the practice of mathematics as fundamentally divorced from the subject's usefulness, and another that believed physical applications determined the course of mathematics. While clearly oversimplifying, he was right to point out that the very nature of mathematical knowledge was at stake [in the education reform]."
Coding is hard, and we should stop saying that everyone can learn it. I don't disagree that advanced computer science is hard - just liked advanced anything - but I don't think we are anywhere at the stage where everyone has picked the low-hanging fruit. I am also reminded of a quotation (that I unfortunately cannot find again) about how it might be true that some students can't learn, but that teachers are contractually obligated to not believe it until the class is over.
Over may be Moore's law of faster processors, or even the number of cores on a chip, but there's still a lot of room for algorithms to improve.
I've always wondered what's stopping people from employing the same small-scale surveillance technologies that governments are using. Indeed, people are now deploying open-source license plate readers. There needs to be some overarching regulation about metadata that we give off.
Contention: we frown on fast food service positions (eg. at McDonald's) not (entirely) because those positions are low-prestige, but also because we think whoever we're talking to can do better, unlike those other people who work there.
One common argument for gun rights is that the citizenry must be able to resist tyranny. But unless we are also allowed to own (and have the knowledge to operate) Predator drones and ICBMs, guns are not going to stop the military.
Living at various Airbnb's for a year sounds interesting and exhausting.
Contention: if you believe that life begins at conception, then the number one killer of black Americans is abortion. That wouldn't mean social justice is not important, it would just mean that abortion is more important (by lives saved), and should therefore be prioritized.
A great discussion of how much content knowledge and how much pedagogical knowledge is needed to teach each level of education. Read the comments.
The process of getting a PhD has a high, unspoken emotional toll. I agree with this, and my grad school experience wasn't even terrible. This cost should be taken into consideration when considering grad school.
Related: why is there so little discussion of how to teach graduate students?
So you think your marriage will last? Wanna bet the cost of your wedding on it?
How the curvature of the planet affects rural planning: back roads are laid out according to a distance-based grid, the grids won't align as you change in latitude. The result is seemingly random jots in the middle of nowhere.
I didn't realize that taking a picture of something you own could violate copyright laws, but that's what happened to a couple who (legally) got their hands on a pre-release Star Wars action figure.
The first person boarding a plane lost their boarding pass and just picks a random seat. Every remaining passenger follows their boarding pass, unless their seat is already taken, in which case they will pick an unoccupied random see. What's the probability that the last passenger gets their assigned seat (assuming the flight is full)? Here's a simulation of this puzzle, but there's an intuitive answer for the explanation.
Online teaching isn't impersonal - if you teach a 30 person class on Shakespeare, where the primary evaluation is writing. That's not the scalable solution that MOOCs are looking for though.
One way of keeping students on their toes is to present a problem, present how to get the solution, then modify the problem slightly so that solution must be arrived at by entirely different means. The example in the article was in a class about a sufficiently broad topic, but I think it will also work if the second solution is a callback to something earlier in the semester.
The June 2004 issue of Reason magazine put a Google Earth picture of their subscriber's house as their cover photo. Each subscriber, individually, with the house circled. Talk about making a point on surveillance and privacy.
The Hunting Ground is a documentary about rape on college campuses and the (lack of) response from administrators about it. Let's just say that there are some controversies surrounding it
A history of the use of computers in education.
Everyone lies about their teaching, especially the teachers you consider good. I am guilty of this, and I especially resonate with the comment at the end about how the author's teaching is "deeply traditional".
Two Canadian started a joke company to ship bottles of air from Canada to China. They are now failing to meet demand.
Speaking of Airbnb, be careful that your host is not secretly filming you.
There's a reason you don't see many articles about Chinese typography: it's extremely tedious and time consuming to do right.
Anakin Skywalkers' arc in the prequels is actually quite a good story - if only it was told correctly.
The Falcon 9 first stage landed successfully! Some technical details and a web cast of the launch. And apparently, ten days later, it's now ready to be refeuled and reused.
I get into debate-arguments regularly, and in addition to this list of good questions, one I often ask is "what evidence would change your position?"
Perhaps I'm in the minority, I'm okay with students considering themselves customers. Instead of arguing about that - after all, they are paying a lot to go to college - I think a more productive debate is about what they bought. I like to think of it like buying a guided expedition to summit Everest. There are things the guides will do, like pick a safe path through the Khumbu Icefall; there are more controversial things that they might do, like carry your personal gear; but even though you paid them, you still have to walk your own body for the three day trek from base camp to summit. Similar, all teachers will do some things (lecture, office hours), some teacher will do additional things (additional help, extra credit), but the student still has to do the work. And despite their protests, students know this - if they truly believe they bought the grade or diploma, then they wouldn't bother showing up to class at all. They know how education is supposed to work, and they're doing the minimum to keep up that facade.
Facebook and Instagram allows pictures of male nipples but not female nipples. So of course they are now tasked with deciding when, exactly, a transitioning male-to-female person is female. I love this.